Short or long sentences?

General

Making sentences shorter or longer can make them:

• More effective

• More informative

• More satisfying

Paragraphs should balance Rhythmic variety of short and long sentences. Long sentence can develop and elaborate an argument, and a short sentence drive the main point home.

Sentence Type	Function	Risk
Short	To emphasize, to clarify, to shock, to drive the point home	Can sound robotic if overused.
Medium	To explain, to connect ideas.	Can become “filler” if not careful.
Long (can be periodic)	To build tension, to provide detail.	High cognitive load; reader may get lost.

Long sentences

• Information that just can’t be wait to sentence two

• Serves the needs of both writer and reader. The writer by compelling him to examine his thought, the reader by letting him into the writer’s thought

• Long sentences are writer oriented

• Cumbersome to follow, but the long sentence clearly shows the connection between the base clause and additional clauses/phrase (maybe better than separated in the paragraph)

• Could use less words to condense the same idea, than several short sentences, with the tradeoff of cognitive load

• Effective to describe a process

• Useful to follow something that unfolds in time

• A flow that unfolds surprising.